Google and Microsoft should be open about their de-linking processes in Europe

[Commentary] Google and other search engines operating in Europe have to take down links to information about people if those people ask them to do so, provided there’s no public-interest or other good reason for keeping the links up.

The problem for now, however, is that the search engines are already plowing ahead with the takedowns and no-one is sure how exactly they’re doing so. European data protection officials, who are due to meet with Microsoft and hopefully Google, want the search engines’ test for removing data to be more transparent. This could be accomplished with a series of blog posts.

We don’t need to know the details of every case (information overload won’t help anyone, and it would defeat the purpose of the exercise anyway) but there’s no reason we can’t get further insight into what the takedown teams are thinking and how they are operating.